At the same time, they required Clark to be personally responsible for its value, in the event the Legislature should refuse to recognize the Kentuckians as citizens, and in the mean time to defray the expense of its conveyance to Kentucky.  Upon these terms he did not feel at liberty to accept the proffered assistance.  He represented to the Council, that the emissaries of the British were employing every means to engage the Indians in the war; that the people in the remote and exposed Stations of Kentucky might be exterminated for the want of a supply which he, a private individual, had at so much hazard and hardship, sought for their relief, and that when this frontier bulwark was thus destroyed, the fury of the savages would burst like a tempest upon the heads of their own citizens.

To these representations, however, the Council remained inexorable; the sympathy for the frontier settlers was deep, but the assistance already offered was a stretch of power, and they could go no further.  The keeper of the public magazine was directed to deliver the powder to Clark; but having long reflected on the situation, prospects, and resources of the new country, his resolution to reject the assistance, on the proposed conditions, was made before he left the Council chamber.

He determined to repair to Kentucky, as he had at first contemplated, to exert the resources of the country for the formation of an independent State.  He accordingly returned the order of the Council in a letter, setting forth his reasons for declining to accept their powder on these terms, and intimating his design of applying for assistance elsewhere, adding “that a country which was not worth defending was not worth claiming.”  On the receipt of this letter the Council recalled Clark to their presence, and an order was passed on the 23d of August, 1776, for the transmission of the gunpowder, to Pittsburg, to be there delivered to Clark, or his order, for the use of the people of Kentucky.  This was the first act in that long and affectionate interchange of good offices which subsisted between Kentucky and her parent State for so many years; and obvious as the reflection is, it may not be omitted, that on the successful termination of this negotiation hung the connection between Virginia and the splendid domain she afterward acquired west of the Alleghany Mountains.

At the fall session of the Legislature of Virginia, Messrs. Jones and Clark laid the Kentucky memorial before that body.  They were, of course, not admitted to seats, though late in the session they obtained, in opposition to the exertions of Colonels Henderson and Campbell, the formation of the territory, which now comprises the present State of that name, into the County of Kentucky.  The first efficient political organization of Kentucky was thus obtained through the sagacity, influence, and exertions of George Rogers Clark, who must be ranked as the earliest founder of that Commonwealth.  This act of the Virginia Legislature first gave it form and a political existence, and entitled it, under the constitution of Virginia, to a representation in the Assembly, as well as to a judicial and military establishment.